"Oh no! You are not coming in! We will come out to serve you." Rose said, shooing me back.

I blinked. Nettle took hold of my collar and yanked me away from the backdoor.

"We are covered in paint." She explained, gesturing to my clothes.

"We are?" I asked.

She smiled. She had a gray dot on her cheek. We had been painting the roof. (I hadn't known you should paint a metallic roof, but obviously it was done.) I looked through my clothes while Rose closed the door and retreated inside.

"Well. You can't see it. But your bottom is gray." Bramble descended the metal ladder by the house. Once he was down, he tried shaking the ladder and looked up thoughtfully.

"I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to buy a pair of new bolts."

I sighed. Then all but fell flat onto the ground. From there I saw the roof's edge and passing clouds overhead. I wasn't sure I ever wanted to rise.

"I could kill for lunch!" Nettle said.

"I don't think you'll have to," Bramble answered her. "I am fairly certain Rose and Fig have whipped up at least sandwiches by now."

I closed my eyes and turned my attention to the ground. By now I had learned to listen to the flow of life in everything living, including the terrain beneath me. I suspected that if I had tried, I could have easily replenished my energies by reaching down and linking myself to the force beneath me.

But I could also replenish said energies with a hearty meal. And that meal could be shared with friends. I didn't need the life force of the nearest tree for survival. Not now. Not here.

Especially as I still didn't understand all the consequences of my skills. What if because of me one of the trees near the house died and then fell onto the newly painted metallic roof?

I opened my eyes again to find Nettle looking down at me. I smiled up at her. There really was paint on her face.

"That looks a bit too comfortable. What have you done to the raven that's usually with you? Did it already decide you were dull company?"

I shook my head against my mossy pillow.

"It's just turned nocturnal again. It comes to me in the dark." At other times it slept like a dead bird on the little shelf in my shack.

"O-kay."

Nettle didn't ask more. She hadn't really told me plainly if she wanted to hear me tell her of my magical world or pretend it didn't exist. Out of habit then I didn't really clearly claim it wasn't present. But I didn't add that the raven was the handsome youth she knew as Plume, my nephew who was obviously too old to be my nephew.

I watched the clouds above.

It had been a sobering experience to have been called back to the Castle. I didn't think I had ever before flown in such a small plane. But just to see how the Court could locate and move me if it wished had brought me back to my heels. I was allowed to be out of the cities. Allowed to stay here in this peaceful company and far from where the vampires had any real power.

And at the same time...

I rolled onto my stomach and found a thin trail of ants cresting a rock.

At the same time it hadn't really even been that unpleasant. There seemed to be a part of me that kind of missed them. Everyone. Having Valentina and Mo in the same room in the familiar setting of sharing tea had been kind of lovely. Despite everything. They were really the only people apart from Plume who knew who I was. Only they knew I had been a vampire turned by magic into something new.

For the rest of the world Timothy White Torch was just a name among millions.

The door to my back opened. I greeted the old librarian, Fig, and got up. She was carrying a tray and was soon followed by Rose with a can of water. Bramble had conjured up wicker chairs for the elderly ladies. While the three of us, the young and painted, had to contend ourselves with rocks and the ground.

What was I to these people?

I wondered this as I reached for a sandwich. Only Daisy, the witch, understood that somehow I was connected to the Court. But even she couldn't guess how. And for Fig, for Rose, for Nettle, for Bramble, I was just a man come to take a break from the City.

Then again I wondered what Fig and Rose remembered from the night Valentina had come to fetch me to explain to the Queen why one of her vampires was a raven. They probably remembered it all, if I understood right how the mapa mushrooms worked. Daisy had undoubtedly explained to them that vampires had come to fetch me. Yet Rose had never mentioned it.

And now wasn't a Saturday. No one was high on the fungus. It was a beautiful summer's day and we were having sandwiches and garden salad in a bit of a mossy yard.

"I tried visiting Daisy this morning, before I came here," Nettle said. "But she wasn't home. Her car was there though."

Fig and Rose exchanged a glance.

"Well." Rose said. She had a mischievous twinkle to her eyes. "She flew away on a broomstick to do business in the Capital. Or so she said yesterday."

"Business she has with an old gentleman friend who always has the most interesting things to exchange." Fig added.

"I wonder what they are exchanging." Rose winked to her friend.

"Oh, I don't know, old tiers maybe?"

They fell to giggling. I smiled uncertainly. Bramble seemed to consider returning to safety onto the roof. But Nettle glanced guiltily at me and then asked:

"Did she really fly away with a broom?"

Fig stopped giggling. "I don't know. I have seen her fly on a broom."

"It's a long distance though," I remarked without thinking, "If she really is going to Breasinghae. It will take her all day just to get there."

Fig and Rose frowned at me and shook their heads in almost unison.

"And who are you? Flying with a broom you take in stride, but it is the distance you are worried about." Rose scrutinized me.

I shrugged and concentrated on a pile of chocolate cookies that were by the sandwich plate.

"Take a spoonful of mapa and we can discuss it," I retorted.

Then I excused myself for the toilet before either woman could catch up on the implications.

It really was a long distance to fly. Maybe Daisy did the same as Plume and took a train at least for part of the journey. It seemed like the natural choice for her even as I was aware of the fact that many witches preferred not to rely on the human transport options. But Daisy owned a car so I didn't think she formed part of that group.

Then again, maybe she liked flying on a broomstick. What did I know of witches and their brooms? Ask me of the vampires and what they thought and felt, I was an expert. But of witches I knew little.

When I returned from behind the shack where I slept, I stopped to wash my hands under a tap that was attached straight to the outer wall. The water apparently came from a pond uphill. Bramble had told me he and his father, Moth, had designed the system. It was only useful for the summer times though. If it was left for winter, the freezing water would break the thin tubes from within.

I splashed my face with the water and then regarded myself in the somewhat moldy mirror hanging above the tap.

I took a good look at the long hair that was drawn into a ponytail. The chin was beardless. Truly beardless. Not a single hair had tried growing out of it after my vampiric incident at the bar. I had left my cheap plastic razor collecting dust on the same shelf Plume used for nesting.

I didn't really like sporting a beard. It fit to some faces, but mine wasn't cut for it. Not to mention it hadn't ever grown strongly, but in uneven patches. When I had been a vampire I hadn't had any. I had been beardless and longhaired, because I had thought that suited me best.

I had never really thought about it much. But vampires could affect their bodybuild to some extent. Theirs was a body that wasn't affected by anything physical. No amount of exercise would make the muscle grow, and no amount of sugar ever equalled dented teeth or stored energy in fat tissue. No amount of time made the hair grow.

And yet Blizzard had a beard and plume did not. Blizzard was built like a bull and Plume was delicate. Blizzard thought of himself as a boxer and Plume thought of himself as a guitarist. Plume liked his hair short, and it stayed short. I could pluck every single hair out, see it turn to dust in my fingers and see the new hair grow back in an instant, exactly to the length that suited Plume best.

I leaned closer to the wall and the mirror.

I didn't think it was quite that simple with me. But obviously I could make the hair grow or stay out of the way.

I dropped.

The Forest seemed to come closer, all the life with its ever present mingling auras became clearer, the spirits and their dance more vivid.

I closed my eyes.

I heard my own heartbeat, felt the lifeforce traveling through my veins, connecting every cell in mysterious ways.

I imagined I was a vampire. And I felt I was the human linked to a vampire. It was the human's lifeforce I felt, his body. And that body was under my will, quite as everything else about him.

As a vampire I had been a natural. Dropping had come easily to me and I had experimented with linking. I had experimented much more than I cared to admit to myself. With animals and humans alike.

I went now fully into the link, to the only one I had, to myself.

It was easy. Natural, like it had always been.

I opened my eyes.

I considered the orange irises in the mirror, turning my head from side to side. They weren't glowing like vampire eyes. But they were a close imitation.

If I wanted to, I could make a run for it. Plume and the Queen would always recognize my presence, my aura. But if I decided to change my face, my build, my name, I could run from the Court. If I wanted to.

I returned the eyes to gray.

I had had now two weeks to practice. Enough time to know it could be done any moment I felt like it.

But here was the problem: I could only have either my gray eyes, or the orange eyes. I had tried to turn them blue, and brown. Even violet. But I could only apparently feel myself either with the colorless eyes or with the orange gaze. I was either the demihuman me, or the vampire of my memories.

If I intended to look completely different from how I was, I would need to fundamentally change how I felt about myself.

I sighed.

You are in trouble.

I stiffened. I hadn't heard a word from Stump for a long time. His presence hung just by me.

Someone has to die tonight. It's in your hands. Get back...

"Like what you see?"

I turned to Nettle.

"What?"

"Do you like what you see? You were looking at yourself for quite the while."

I smiled at the timing, Stump's words receding to the back of my head.

"I cannot say I dislike my face," I told her honestly. "It's the only one I can imagine calling my own."

She laughed.

"Come. We still have the other half to go today. Bramble is already up there."

Just then I heard something crashing down inside the shed. Nettle heard it as well.

"What was that?" She asked.

"I am not sure..." I shrugged. "Sounded like my library loot falling from the shelf." I shrugged.

I was just about to get inside and check, but then Bramble shouted something from the roof of the bigger building and I went to hear him out.

I fetched him the broom he asked for. I climbed the ladder with the broom's handle in my mouth, my teeth pressed in the soft wood. I had to adjust the handle once for better balance.

Once I was already up with the broom, I decided the fallen book pile could probably wait for evening and started brushing down the few needles and leaves that had descended on this side of the roof since yesterday when we had cleaned it thoroughly anticipating today's painting task.

Some five hours later the whole ordeal was done. Bramble was the last one on the roof, finishing up the patches near the ladder while Nettle and I were already on the ground cleaning the equipment and ourselves.

She had brought with her a change of clothes that she had left in a bag by her bike. I went to get a change for myself from my shack.

I yanked the door open, and strode inside before my eyes had the proper time to adjust to the darker interior.

I tripped, fell and hit my head on the bed's wooden frame.

Pain flared through me. There were tears in my eyes as I tried to make sense of the chaos.

I had hit my foot on the shelf that lay on the floor. Books, my clothes and the few other items I owned had all been flung around.

And absolutely none of that mattered.

"Plume?" I whispered.

I scrambled to my feet, my head still sending pulses of pain. There was something wet as well. Apparently I had cut myself, maybe on a nail.

Plume lay immobile, his torso on the bed and his lower body on the fallen bookcase. He was a humanoid again. His hand had stayed in an awkward looking position, showing a silver watch peeking under a white sleeve.

I turned him over so I could see his face. There were no signs of life.

Someone has to die tonight.

I didn't know if Stump repeated the words or if I simply remembered the thought from earlier. My heart hammered in my chest.

I checked the time from his watch.

Then I combed through the pile of stuff around me in search of my phone. Once I had it in my hand, I tried with trembling fingers to find the little app that told me the weather forecast.

I had three hours until the sun would set.

I didn't know when Plume would truly wake up. I didn't know if he would be thirsty. But I did know he couldn't link. If he was very thirsty, he wouldn't have much sanity left in him before he sought a victim. It would cloud all other thoughts. I doubted he would be so enraged as to pick me, and I more than suspected a vampire couldn't drink me up. But that left everyone else in the vicinity naked for him. Including Rose and her nearest neighbor in Fig.

Someone has to die tonight.

Somewhere in my mind lived a small voice that asked me why I hadn't seen this coming. But it was a very small voice easily drowned under the rising panic.

I needed to get Plume out of here. Out of this small village. In the following two hours. Before he woke up. I needed to find him a place where there were victims–sacrifices–more suitable than my elderly host, who had a family and friends.

I didn't have a driver's license. A fact which made borrowing a car a somewhat complicated matter.

I could probably call the Castle, but would my message reach a listening ear before the catastrophe unfolded before my eyes?

And Daisy–the very only person who might grasp the situation for what it was and could offer to help me solve it–was just today visiting the capital city, so far in the north of the country she could have been on another planet.

My mind absolutely blank, I sank to the floor.

I didn't know what to do. But I did know one thing. The realization lit in my head as a sudden laser beam.

The Queen had known. Of course she had. And she had nodded and let me take the raven with me. Because it suited her to have me in this position, caring for the Court's business. Choosing where and how I would facilitate the death to take place.

This was why I hadn't wanted to be a vampire. I hadn't wanted to play the god of death.

But where and how was I to take it with me tonight?